


sometimes life slips in through the back door

by ShyAudacity



Series: hold back all my dark [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Adoption, Angst with a Happy Ending, Archie Andrews Needs a Hug, Archie Andrews-centric, Foster Care, Fred Andrews Needs a Hug, Good Parent Fred Andrews, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Archie Andrews, Hurt/Comfort, Mentioned Betty Cooper, Orphans, Other, idk what else to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 07:09:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15724467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShyAudacity/pseuds/ShyAudacity
Summary: Archie is home alone for the first time watching movies. Mom picked up a shift at the restaurant bar down the road, and Mrs. Melendez across the hall has agreed to keep her phone on in case Archie needs something. The only real instruction that Mom gave him was to not open the door unless absolutely necessary.So, when a couple of cops knock on his apartment door at ten o’clock at night, he’s not totally sure what to do.He opens the door just a crack, leaves the chain connected to the wall as he looks up at them nervously.“My mom told me not to open the door.”The cop on the right pulls a sour face.“Son, this is about your Mom, she’s been in an accident.”ORArchie's whole perspective on losing everything, becoming a foster kid, and meeting Fred Andrews.





	sometimes life slips in through the back door

**Author's Note:**

> I did a poll recently asking what people wanted to see more in my writing and somebody said they wanted more Archie angst so... here it is. 
> 
> Unbeta'd and title from She Used To Be Mine from Waitress the musical.

The first time that Archie has to sit in a courtroom he’s just turned seven. Mom makes him wear a suit and tie that makes his neck itch, tells him that he can get a snack from the vending machine later if he’s not too loud, but Archie knows that she’ll let him anyways.

His dad is sitting away from them, up front near the judge and a bunch of other people who are dressed nicely.

The last time Archie saw him was months ago; he’d given Dad all the money in his piggy bank, twelve dollars and sixty-five cents, to help him with whatever he needed to “fix.” That was the day that Dad had torn up the kitchen looking for the secret stash of money he thought Mom was hiding; it’s in the bathroom in the box for Mom’s old curling iron, but Archie isn’t supposed to know that.

At the end of court, Dad gets taken away in handcuffs like the bad guys always do on cop shows and Mom just points him towards the vending machine, doesn’t say anything on the ride home.

She does, however, pull him into her lap once they’re home and changed out of their stiff clothes, despite the fact that he’s already half her size. Archie plays with the arms and legs of his red Power Ranger while Mom hooks her chin over his shoulder.

“Are you worried?” she asks.

He doesn’t know what she’s talking about, so Archie just shrugs.

“Yeah.” Mom says, “Me too.”

***

He makes the mistake only once of asking about Moms and Dad relationship status.

“Mom?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Are you and Dad getting a divorce now that he’s in jail?”

The smile drops from Erin’s face, she says, “Archie, were never married in the first place.”

“Why not?”

She shrugs, rubs her hand over his head. “Life kept getting in the way, I guess.”

Archie feels bad for asking and says so, but Mom just shakes her head, says that its fine. Erin finishes making his sandwich then spends the rest of the afternoon under a blanket on the couch; she sleeps there more often than not anyways, gives Archie the bedroom to himself.

Archie joins her later after he gets tired of watching reruns, squeezes himself between the back of the couch and her chest, then just holds on. As far as he knows, hugs can fix just about anything.

***

Dad only calls a handful of times, usually when he’s feeling guilty, apologizes a lot. Archie never knows what to say to him when he does that, he’s not really sure what Dad has to be sorry about.

He shows up once right before Archie turns nine, asks if he can come in but Archie says no; he doesn’t think mom would be too happy to see him right after getting out of the shower. Dad looks hurt, but doesn’t complain, leaves without saying much else.

“Who was that?” Mom asks, still towel drying her hair.

“No one,” he lies. “Wrong address.”

***

Archie is home alone for the first time watching movies. Mom picked up a shift at the restaurant bar down the road, and Mrs. Melendez across the hall has agreed to keep her phone on in case Archie needs something. The only real instruction that Mom gave him was to not open the door unless absolutely necessary.

So, when a couple of cops knock on his apartment door at ten o’clock at night, he’s not totally sure what to do.

He opens the door just a crack, leaves the chain connected to the wall as he looks up at them nervously.

“My mom told me not to open the door.”

The cop on the right pulls a sour face.

“Son, this is about your Mom, she’s been in an accident.”

The rain echoes throughout the entire car, it kind of reminds him of his Dad’s old, rattily drum set; he’s never been in a squad car before, seen them around his neighborhood a few times, though. No one says anything on the ride to the hospital, and Archie can’t figure out if that’s a good thing or not.

Once they actually get there, he’s not allowed to go in because he doesn’t have an adult with him; don’t they get that his Mom is the only adult around? After getting tired of standing on his tiptoes trying to peak in the window, he slips in when no one is watching. Archie just stares at his Mom covered in bandages and tubes for a minute before sitting down, too afraid to touch.

Not long after that, an older woman that Archie has never met before comes bursting into the room, confused by the sight of him.

“What are you doing in here?”

Archie just stares blankly at her, “This is my Mom.”

The woman gasps, then says, “Her sister said- oh, but I never thought-.”

Archie finally asks who she is, he’s tired and scared and doesn’t feel bad for interrupting; she looks almost appalled.

“I’m _her_ mother.”

Archie has never heard anything about his grandmother, as far as he knew he didn’t have one. He mutters an introduction, she gives one back, and the two of them sit in silence.

Archie dozes periodically. Doesn’t say anything to Joyce- as she’s insisted he call her- until well into the next night. She keeps talking about how guilty she feels, how she could have tried harder with Erin and Archie doesn’t know what to say that won't make one of them upset.

On a weird level, he wishes his dad was here, wishes someone would tell that things are going to be fine.

In the morning he wakes up and someone’s coat is draped over him, but it’s not that that wakes him up it’s the beeping. Before he’s even fully awake, four nurses and a doctor are all rushing in, trying and failing to fix the problem. One of them calls time of death, and Archie rushes over to Joyce, tugging on her arm.

“Fix her.”

“What?”

“Fix her, you- you have to fix this.”

“Wh- Archie, I can’t.”

“N-no, you’re a mom, moms can fix anything, you have to fix her, please.”

“Hon, it doesn’t work like that. The injuries were too severe, there’s not- I’m s- _I’m so sorry_.”

Archie starts crying loudly when she starts apologizing, doesn’t know what to do when she tries to comfort him, so he just stands there, wishing it was his mom hugging him instead. He can’t bear to look at her, so he focuses on the strip of windows that the curtains don’t cover; he hadn’t realized that the rain never stopped.

He wonders, absently, who’s going to tell his dad, what he’ll think of this whole thing; maybe he’ll come to get him, take him away from the place where nothing good happens.

But nothing seems to go his way right now; Dad is, apparently, behind bars again and Joyce claims to be too old to take care of a kid, even one that’s related to her, says it’s too much for her handle after what happened. She keeps looking at Archie sadly, like she feels guilty for saying no.

He’s only ten years old when he becomes an orphan.

***

The first two placements don’t go over well at all. The first is a pair of sixty-year-olds that didn’t realize they were getting a grieving ten-year-old. The next is an already family of five kids that don’t know how to deal with his bursts of anger; don’t they know what happened? Don’t they care?

From the get, the mother of his third family sees right through him, doesn’t put up with his attitude or anything. They already have a five and a three year old and the mom, Melody, is more than willing to give Archie his space but also knows how to put him in his place when need be. Tells him: “Being angry is fine so long as you’re not taking it out on someone else.”

He thinks the advice is stupid, but goes along with it anyway; being this upset all the time is really hard.

He spends most of his time with the family dog, an old Dalmatian named Maggie that doesn’t move much but is content to let Archie sit and pet her all he wants. Archie stays there for about a year before the family decides to move out of state, and Archie cannot come with, so he gets moved around again.

He doesn’t say this out loud, but he’s really upset about it; he was really beginning to like that family.

***

He’s never been in a foster home that had only one parent, but this Fred guy seems okay; he lets Archie get mushrooms on his pizza the first night, doesn’t badger him for not talking much. It ends up being an early night, and Archie spends most of it lying on his new bed in a half empty room, staring up at the ceiling and wondering how long this one is going to last.

***

They’re cleaning up the living room because Fred has people coming over for a work thing and he promised that they could go to the arcade tomorrow if Archie helps out a bit.

He picks up a photo without thinking about it, looks at the woman and child it in for a minute before asking, “Who is this?”   

Fred’s face falls a little, says, “That’s my wife, Mary, and my daughter.”  

Archie feels bad for asking, so he puts the photo down and doesn’t ask where they are, wonders if Fred misses them as much as he misses his mom.

Later, right before people are supposed to come over, Archie thinks of something.

“What are you gonna say… if they ask about me?”

Fred shrugs, says: “I’ll tell them that you’re my son; anyone who has something to say about it can take it up with me, alright?”

Nobody’s ever offered to do that before, and Archie thinks that maybe this place is going to be better than he originally thought.

***

School sucks for the most part. He’s never been good at school, or being the new kid; Archie always hates when kids ask why he moved, never knows what to say because the truth hurts too much to admit.

Betty from next door seems nice enough, always asks if he wants to sit with her at lunch despite knowing that he’ll say no and shows him a shortcut on the walk to school. He gets paired with a kid called _Jughead_ for a social studies project and is majorly relieved when he doesn’t ask about the living situation. Fred takes the both of them out to Pop’s for dinner when they get a B+ on the assignment.

The first time Jughead sleeps over, Archie asks why he never said anything about all of it, about why he calls Fred by his first name or why he’s moved around so much.

Jughead just shrugs, says, “Almost everybody’s got their shit they don’t like to talk about, the ones who don’t have shit are the ones who ask because they don’t know any better.”

Archie nods, then an hour later pauses the video game mid-battle to tell him: “My Dad’s in jail and my Mom is dead.”

Jughead just nods, doesn’t apologize or press or anything like everyone else does just says: “My Dad’s an on again off again drunk and my Mom doesn’t love him anymore because of it.”

Archie nods, then resumes the game; he thinks that this is might be what it means to have a best friend. 

***

They’re at the hardware store, well Fred is, at least. Archie was just supposed to wait in the car, but then he noticed the pet shop a few doors and decided to get out and look. There’s two tiny basset hounds playfully fighting with each other in the window, looks like a pair of brothers.

He’s still standing there watching them when Fred comes out of the store, calls him back to the car. He looks for another long second before walking over, climbing into the front seat. Fred looks at him funny a few times before speaking up.

“Do you like dogs, Archie?”

He nods. “My last family had one, but she was older so you couldn’t really play with her or stuff like that.”

“Would you like to have a dog someday?”

“Yeah,” He shrugs. “If I’m lucky enough.”

The car goes quiet again; Archie is only sort of paying attention when Fred makes a U-Turn driving away from the direction of the house, he makes a confused face.

“I thought we were going back to the house.”

“Change of plans,” Fred says. “I was thinking we’d go back to the pet shop.”

Archie is stunned, gives him an excited, almost deer in headlights look.

“Does that sound okay with you?”

He nods like his life depends on it, and Fred shares a grin with him. They’re halfway there when he remembers something else.

“Actually, could we go to the animal shelter instead? It’s just- I heard once that strays and rescues are less likely to get adopted over puppies and… I don’t know, I think it would just be kind of cool to get a rescue.”

Fred smiles at him again, “That sounds great, Archie.”

The next thing he knows they’re walking out of the shelter with a golden lab name Vegas and Archie feels like he’s on cloud nine.

Jughead comes over later, they’re trying to teach Vegas tricks in the backyard when Jughead looks up at him and says, “Dude, you’re so lucky.”

 _Yeah_ , Archie thinks to himself, _I guess I am._

***

It was not supposed to rain today. It only rains like this every once and a while and it always makes Archie want to crawl under all the covers on his bed and not come out until it’s over.

He’s at the Jones’ for the night and Archie feels like his skin is trying to crawl away from his body. Jughead makes a concerned face at him more than once before Archie decides that he needs to go home, movie night can happen some other time when the thunder isn’t echoing throughout the house.

Fred comes to get him, _thank god_ ; he’s not sure what he would have done if he’d said no. Archie runs out to the truck as soon as he pulls up to the house, barely remembering to say goodbye. Things are quiet on the drive back; it’s not until a train keeps them waiting that Fred finally speaks up.

“Do you wanna tell me why you asked me to come get you?”

Archie shrugs, staring down at where he’s been wringing his hands together.

“I’m gonna need a little more than that this time.”

Archie stares out the window, the red lights from the car in front of them illuminating his features. He feels like he could swallow his own tongue.

“It was raining…” He says carefully. “When my mom died.”

Fred sucks in his breath a little, and Archie isn’t sure whether or not he should continue. He’s never told this story before, but now that he’s started he can’t bring himself to stop.

“She was coming home from a meeting or something and she lost control of the car somehow. She was in a coma for a few days before she-… I wasn’t with her.”

Out of everything, that’s the part that he hates the most, that his mom was _alone_ when the accident happened. It haunts him sometimes, thinking about how afraid she must have been. Then again, sometimes he hopes that she didn’t feel anything; maybe leaving is easier when you don’t know that it’s coming.

“I lost my family in a storm, too,” Fred says, quietly.

Archie finally looks over at him, surprised. “You did?”

“It was raining, a lot like it is right now, and the car in front of us came to a sudden stop so I swerved. Our car flipped six times before it landed in a ditch. Mary and Erin… they both died from the impact, but I woke up the next morning in a hospital bed. Ten years later and I still think about them every day.”

Archie feels his chest go a little tight at the name, says the first thing on his mind before he can think about it. “How did you deal with it? Losing them, I mean.”

“You know, some days I’m not sure that I did.”

Archie is quiet for a minute before he responds, feeling slightly braver than before.

“My mom’s name was Erin.”

 “Yeah?”

He nods, “I think she would have liked you.”

“Why’s that?”

“You guys have the same goofy laugh. Same bad jokes, too.”

Fred chuckles a little, “Well if she’s anything like you, I bet that I’d have liked her a lot.”

The train finally passes as the conversation ends. When they get home, Fred asks Archie if he wants to watch a movie; it's not one that he’s seen, but he’s heard Jughead talk about it a couple of times.

Once Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is over, Archie drags himself upstairs and into his room, flopping down onto his bed. He keeps thinking about his mom, about her dark hair and the toothy smile she always walked around with. He dreams of her that night and for once, it doesn't hurt. 

***

This is officially the longest that he’s ever stayed with a foster family, and Archie isn’t exactly sure how to feel about it. It’s been eating at him lately, how Fred didn’t have to take him in, how he very likely could have gotten rid of him by now if he really wanted to.

He wonders, sometimes, what his Mom would think about all of this, or if his Dad knows how he’s doing.

One night, before he can stop himself Archie asks: “Did you take me in because you were lonely?”

Fred looks up from his paper, meeting him dead in the eye.

“No,” He says firmly. “I did it because I missed being a Dad.”

Archie’s not sure what he was expecting from him, but it puts him at ease nonetheless.

***

Archie has never hurt this much in all his life and he’s sure of it.

He’s had a stomach ache since before lunch and nothing that he’s tried has been able to get rid of it. After calling it an early night, he stumbled into the bathroom around midnight to puke and then found himself unable to get back up. Every time that he tries his legs just buckle beneath him. To make matters worse, Archie can’t keep anything down; no matter how much water he drinks it just keeps coming back up.

Everything hurts too much and its too hot and he wants it to _stop_.

Fred comes in at some point, lord knows how long Archie’s actually been in there by now. Fred holds his face in his hands, looking at him with a panicked expression.

“Arch? Kiddo, I need you to tell me where it hurts.”

“Side.” He mutters, painfully.

 Fred presses his hand against the right side of Archie’s stomach and _god_ that’s even worse. He throws himself away from it as best he can, pressing himself into the corner where the tub meets the wall, groaning loudly.

“Shit, _hey_ , hey Archie, I’m sorry, I’m sorry for doing that- I’m gonna be right back okay?”

Fred leaves and then comes back again in no time; it's all very hazy to Archie, honestly. He feels like he’s boiling, like someone is trying to cook him alive from the inside out.

Fred sits as close to him as he can, pulls him close with one arm over his shoulder; Archie lets his head loll into the curve of Fred’s neck.

“The ambulance is gonna be here any minute, alright?” He says quietly. “They’re gonna take you to the hospital and fix you right up.”

_No. Not that. Anything but that._

Archie sobers up in a second, stiffens up under his arm.

“No, no I don’t- please don’t make me go to the hospital. I don’t- I don’t need to go, please.”

“Arch, your appendix is about to burst, you have to go.”

Archie whines audibly, curls in on himself as the pain catches up with him again. He starts floating in and out of awareness after that, barely registers the fact that he’s being put into the back of an ambulance, that Fred is still there with him. He thinks he can hear someone around him talking, but then again, it sounds a lot like his own voice, using whatever fight he has left.

He doesn’t even realize that he blacked out- or maybe he just fell asleep- until he wakes up again, his eyelids still heavy. Archie can’t feel much of anything, things are still hazy and weird. What’s he knows is that he’s in a bed that does not belong to him and someone else is there, sitting next to him with a hand on his shoulder.

He looks over at the figure sitting next to him and it’s _his dad_. Not Fred dad but his real dad, the one that used to make him chocolate chip pancakes before things got bad.

“Dad?”

Dad looks confused for a second, but still responds, “Hey, kid.”

The only thing that Archie can think is: “Why’d you leave me?”

“I-I’m sorry- I didn’t- I couldn’t help it, I’m sorry.” He says in a whisper, shaking his head.

Archie’s face scrunches up with the want to cry, tries to curl onto his side. He reaches around blindly until he finds Dad’s hand, pulling it closer to him, holding it as tight as he can manage.

“I missed you. I missed you s’much.”

“Go back to sleep, kiddo, you need your rest.”

Dad runs his hands over Archie’s head, and he just nods, already falling asleep again, refusing to let go.

The next time he wakes up he’s far more coherent, feels confused when he sees that Fred is the only one sitting there and has to stop himself from asking if what happened earlier is actually real. He’s afraid that the truth might upset him more than he’d like to admit. 

***

Archie wakes up and knows exactly what day it is and _my god_ does it hurt.

Five years. It’s been five years since his Mom died. He’s been anticipating this for the last two weeks and somehow, it’s still the worst he’s felt in years. The first year Archie didn’t say anything to anybody, just went to school and cried in the bathroom when he needed to. The next few years he only sort of noticed, tried to avoid it as much as he could. But today, today feels like an unending ache.

He walks into the kitchen in the morning, eyes already wet when he asks: “Can I stay home today?”

Fred nods; doesn’t have to ask why because he already knows, he knows this kind of grief all too well.

Archie curls up on the couch under a blanket because that’s where Mom always slept when he was a kid, he wants to feel close to her again. He turns on Wizard of Oz; she always told him that it was her favorite movie. Fred stays with him the entire time, just sitting there ready to talk if Archie needs it.

Later, once they’ve moved onto Finding Nemo, he brings himself to finally tell the story of his parents, or what he remembers of it at least.

His parents meet their freshman year of college and hadn’t known each other very long before Erin got pregnant, they tried to make it work but they just couldn’t. Dad got into drugs and Mom didn’t have anyone to fall back on so she did most of it herself, she did practically everything for Archie.

“How old was she when-?”

“Twenty-eight,” Archie interrupts, not looking at him. “She had just turned twenty-eight.”

It hurts too much to think about so he doesn’t say much more, just lets Fred hug him and then goes to bed for the night.

He knows how ridiculously lucky he is to have ended up here, to get Fred as a Dad and have friends that truly care about him. Archie has seen the statistics about foster kids, how most of them end up aging out of the system when they turn eighteen. It terrifies him to think that that could be him someday. He doesn’t know what he’d do with himself if all of this was ripped away from him.

The next day, Archie walks into the kitchen twenty minutes before dinner, nervous as ever.

“Hey, Arch, what’s-?”

“Would you adopt me?”

Fred’s head whips up so fast that Archie worries that he might hurt himself; he bites his lip, anxiously waiting for an answer.

Fred’s face splits into a wide grin. “Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, kiddo.”

Archie lets out a shaky breath, feeling over joyed. He comes forward, bringing Fred in for a hug. Both of them squeeze tightly, knowing that this is a moment that they’d never forget.

***

The second time that Archie has to sit in a courtroom he’s just turned sixteen. The collar of his suit makes his neck itch and his tie is always on the wrong side of too tight, but he’s so goddamn excited. He’s getting adopted today. Everything that’s happened in the last few years since he moved in with Fred has been leading up to this moment.

Judge Morris looks up at him after going over all the paper work.

“You have a letter that you’d like to read, is that right, son?”

Archie nods, standing up. His palms are clammy; he clears his throat before he starts.

“When I was seven my father went to jail on a drug charge and he’s been in and out ever since. When I was ten, my mother got into a car wreck and died a few days later. Neither one of them had much family to speak of, so I became a ward of the state. I got moved around three times before I ended up here, before a guy named Fred Andrews decided he wanted to be a parent again and got stuck with me. But if you ask him, he won’t say he got stuck with me, he’ll say he’s got the best kid in the world, that everything changed for the better when I showed up.

“Fred Andrews is the best thing that ever happened that to me, I don’t doubt that for a second. He’s shown me more love and compassion than I’ve seen in years, more than some of my own family members could manage. He’s the kind of guy who’s willing to let an angry twelve-year-old into his home and give him a new family, one that I know I can count on. I think a part of me always knew that this one was going to work out for the best, and I can’t wait for it to be official.”  

Archie wipes his hands on his jacket as he finishes; Fred squeezes his shoulder, looking at him with teary eyes.

A few minutes later, Judge Morris slams his gavel down saying “Archibald Benjamin Andrews, you are officially adopted.”

Archie starts crying as soon as he finishes, turns and holds onto Fred as tightly as he can, feeling overjoyed. He has a family again; everything that he’s been wanting- hoping for years has finally come true.  

**Author's Note:**

> Archie really is my favorite character to write, if you couldn't already tell. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments/Kudos/Prompts are not only appreciated but encouraged. If you wanna talk Riverdale then come find me on tumblr as archieandrewsprotectionsquad. Thanks again for reading, have a great day!


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